bones, sinking like stones
by lydiamartins
Summary: she builds up her castle walls so that nobody can climb them - blaircentric, blairchuck; for coppertone wars' twelve days of christmas challenge, level three, part three!


**sum; **she builds up her castle walls so that nobody can climb them - blaircentric; for coppertone wars' twelve days of christmas challenge, level three, part three!

**bones, sinking like stones**  
blair waldorfs

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The sounds of high heels clicking can be heard on the pavement, and the cleanly washed linoleum floors of the high school; platform shoes clunk in perfect unison with one another, perhaps to the tune of a popular song from the 80's, and suddenly stop as the final bell rings, the school erupting in cheers from the concept of a winter break. Individuals fling themselves upon significant others, others swirling around in the center, with their friends, grabbing the complimentary hot chocolates from Constance Billiard's foyers.

There comes a discreet wail from one of the lower levels of the school, a bathroom door from which outside four girls guard, taking a deep breath as they try to block on the sounds of the wails with small conversation among themselves, mostly about the upcoming Harvest season, and what an honor it was to be chosen to lead the festival, and how lucky the decision was made. Of course, it's all lies; the only reason why they had been chosen was because of their friend, to say, who had various connections.

Perhaps calling Blair their friend would have been a lie; it was more of the fact that she was their supposed Queen, and they were her subjects, a principle of necessity from the times of ancient and old, something that the four of them had taken for granted. Outside the windows, they stare at the events, longing to feel the warmth beneath their skin; Mere children swarm through their pods, fish in a sea, flocking to the doorways in a balmy summer, popsicles sweating upon the head of their lip, chocolate swirls sticking to the back of their tongue. Leaves fall upon the ground, a shade of malachite, falling upon the neatly trimmed grass which hides dirt and mounds of poison beneath, the perfect pretense of everything, really.

.

She's loved - she's loved the wrong people, and never loved the right ones, but it's too late now. Blair's done with fighting for somebody who doesn't care - or maybe cares in all of the wrong ways about her; she reassures herself that she deserves better, but when exiting the room, she catches a glimpse of him staring back at her, almost as if in disgust. She stares at herself in the mirror and strips, examining every flaw - the extra layer of fat that has grown between her thighs when she's been carelessly happy and the double chin starting to form, and it's not right, it can't be.

Serena - who always seems to be so happy - never looks as though she's bloated with exhilaration, but then again, that's Serena - she's almost a different kind of species, that one girl that every guy wants to be with, and the kind that every girl wants to be; and it's not even fair, because Serena doesn't even seem to try to be the Queen - it just happens, naturally.

She examines herself in the morning, boring holes into the mirror - her hair is limper than usual, the ends in dire need of something, anything, and her headband is cleanly snapped in half, in frustration or in anger, from a previous night; one eye seems a little smaller than the other, bruising a little near the bottom, and she immediately grabs some foundation and delicately rubs the liquid underneath her eye.

Perhaps, it's just the light, she tells herself; her name is Blair Waldorf, and Waldorf women are perfect - they just have to be, it's the way of living. Maybe she's adopted, she thinks to herself, because when she looks at her mother, there's not a single resemblance in her own self - Blair misses her father sometimes, all the time, and she wishes back to the years before high school, when everything was simpler.

The year that Nate Archibald asked her to be his girlfriend. The year before she learned that her best friend had slept with her boyfriend, while her boyfriend was her date at the Shephard wedding; and both of them had the guts to pretend as though the whole ordeal could be smoothed over with an "I'm sorry". Well, it couldn't - she had been spent too long dreaming a perfect fairytale to realize that life isn't what she always thought it should be, and perhaps, she should have seen this coming, all along - Nate and Serena, that is.

.

So, she builds up her castle walls until nobody can climb them once more - Blair stares at him with cold eyes, and tells herself to move on and to stop holding his hand, and pretending that everything is okay when the whole premise of her life is completely ruined. Staring into his eyes, she remembers a memory when they were younger - back then, when the two of them had ruined everything, when he had ruined her and when she had supposedly broke him - but she can't deal with him anymore. Not Chuck; she's fought for him all year, and the only thing that he's ever done was not care.

Her mother's always liked Serena better - there's no question about the fact, and Blair refuses to believe, for a while, at least, that Eleanor would rather have Serena as a daughter than her - the thought's quite too painful, but as she stands up on the sidelines, her hair limp and her face pale, she notices Serena and her new elite socialite friends on the runway.

There's a certain warmth to her best friend that she'll never be able to have - and it's really not okay; Blair can't deal with not being good enough, and as soon as Serena smiles up at the crowd, all the thoughts come rushing back. About how Eleanor always remarked how Blair should be more like Serena, more like her best friend, how she should stop eating so much horrible food and be careful with her diet, and how Serena can rely on her beauty while Blair can only rely on her intelligence, which isn't coming along too well, now is it?

Blair blinks, and takes a deep breath, trying to forget everything - but then she sees Serena on Page Six the next day, and forgets everything next to the sweet porcelain - she didn't mean to do it, but everything lately, it's just been pushing her. Then again, there's no reason for her to explain herself - nobody understands, and nobody cares.

Blair thinks back to a time, much earlier, when Serena and her had been best friends - forever and always, they had sworn - more like sisters, before Nate, and before Chuck, and before the Shephard wedding, just two sisters having the times of their lives. The moment flashes before her eyes, and she stares at Serena on the stage, wipes a tear away discreetly ( but then again, nobody even looks at her unless it's to criticize her ) and moves on.

Certain memories stand out more than others - Blair's standing on the steps, more alone than ever; her hair is curled into ringlets, and her ruby red headband signifies her position as a queen; her outfit was picked out by her mother, and styled to perfection, but she's lost her throne, once and for all. There's no way to rebuild power without bringing down somebody else, and as she blinks, and takes a deep breath, Blair's not even sure if this world is worth it sometimes, no matter how much everybody else thinks that being in it is.

.

But, her life won't be bad forever - Blair refuses to let her perfect fairytale slip out of her hands, but without her knowing it, it does, and maybe that's for the better good for everyone, for herself, because she's grown up now, and she's moved past dreaming in fairytales.

There are moments when everything's right though, and she feels like a princess once more - those few moments when Eleanor comments that the diet that Blair just started has been going very well, and gives Blair the chance to be on the cover on one of her Waldorf Designs magazines, times when Harold and Roman come back from France, and for a few minutes, they all feel like a family again, when she's hugging her best friend - her sister - and feels as though everything will be better, that it's okay not to run away to Paris to solve her problems, but instead, she's going to face them with Serena by her side, dancing like an ecstatic idiot on chairs at a bat mitzvah.

But then, with every good moment, there has to be a bad one - that's just the way of the universe trying to make Blair realize that her life, that any life, can't always be picture perfect. There are other harder moments to forget - once when Serena, or maybe it was Blair, did something unforgivable, and she feels as though she's completely alone in this world.

While everybody stares at her defeat, that moment of horror when a gossip girl blast goes out, and everybody in the schoolyard looks at her and whispers 'slut', 'whore', 'bitch'; when Nate screws up everything because he's always going to be in love with Serena, and it's never going to be Blair, when Chuck does something slimy that she should have seen coming and nothing else in the world matters but trying to lose those memories.

Yet, she wipes away the tears, and reminds herself that she's Blair Waldorf - strong, beautiful, and independent - and tries to move on.

She takes a glass of wine from Humphrey and downs it at Dorota's wedding, trying to ignore the fact that she's never felt more slimy and horrible in her life - she ruined Dorota's wedding, in a way; maybe she just should have lied and been one part of the happy couple. But in a way, Blair can't lie about this anymore - maybe she still loves Chuck, but an apology and three words won't absolve him this time.

.

There's this world that she lives in - the Upper East Side, that is; it's a beautiful world with skyscrapers and dreams.

The muddled, opaque sky - its previously sunny blues were concealed by clouds and rains, reflecting upon Blair's mood - were the perfect backdrop for a typical last day of high school; she would have to move on from this world, and realize that she wasn't a teenager anymore, and she had to stop living like one. Then again, it wasn't as simple as that; they lived in New York City and Brookyln and Manhattan and across the pond, and she was going to miss this place, no matter how many bad - and good - memories had occurred here.

Serena spends time with Brooklyn, and Blair doesn't feel like kicking him out and demanding girl time - after all, it's rare to see her best friend this happy, and it usually means that something wrong might happen soon, so Blair decides to leave them be for the meantime, at least until she bores herself with retail therapy. The streets are crowded, and the skyscrapers stretch higher than the eye; she slightly laughs, when her dad was here, and when she was younger, he used to take her to the Empire State Building. When she stood from the glass ledge at the top of the building, Blair felt as though she was omnipotent, as if anything in the world was within her grasp - Blair hadn't felt that powerful for a while.

As she walks through the streets of the Upper East Side, there are flashes of cameras everywhere she goes, but they're not directed on her, of course - the eyes and ears of gossip girl are everywhere, and Blair feels as though she should sort of care about that fact, but right now, feeling almost free and liberated in a way, as if she's going to be starting a new journey - and have to leave behind an old one that she's not ready to leave behind - she doesn't care about Gossip Girl, at least for a few minutes before the blast comes from her phone.

She takes a deep breath, and tries to avoid the text messages from her friends who say that they've found some important information on Gossip Girl; typically, she would have come running back to them, but she takes her time in the city. Blair watches the hustle and the bustle, people flagging down taxis and hurrying in their own day, rushing, and never truly seeing anything for the way that it is.

The air feels alive, and there are people shouting from stands on the sides of the roads - there are freshly baked three layer cakes, and then there are delicacies of chocolates that cost more than a thousand dollars - not that money has ever been a concern - and the smell of destruction and carbon monoxide and mint and everything about summer here, feels like home on the vast skyline of New York. Blair walks through Central Park - the last place of nature that's been untouched by the world around it - and joggers run through the parks, children play and dawdle while old friends reconnect, sitting down on some of the iron-wrought benches - she walks down the path, trying to remember everything.

And in the night, the city is more alive than ever - it's truly the city that never sleeps - and a new journey must begin.

.

College at NYU isn't what Blair had planned it to be - at least not in her picture perfect fairytale.

To be honest, if her picture perfect fairytale even existed in real life, Blair would probably still be with Nate and going to Yale, and making her parents proud of her, but perhaps she's grown up and maybe thought that she's been lucky enough to be able to get into NYU - even though it's not an Ivy League, it's not a dream school, it's not a school that Waldorf women go to - after all of the scandals of senior year.

But, maybe, just maybe - it'll be enough.

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**notes |** um okay that ending and everything sucked ; this is my first gossip girl fanfic, so - i just like the character of blair waldorf, probably more in the first two seasons of gossip girl and i never read most of the books so this is probably inaccurate but hope you guys like this! this is probably somewhere in the tv-verse, and the beginning would be post 1x13, and maybe the end would be in the beginning of season three?

**dedication | **for the coppertone wars' twelve days of christmas challenge, level three, part three! prompt; a fic about one of your favorite characters, (:


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